Having said that, and given you ample warning and a moment or two to play catch-up (if necessary), I will dive right into the subject of this issue’s comparison, the Ferrari 250 GTO. I should tell you right away how un-biased I am not when regarding this car in its full-scale magnificence. In terms of absolute beauty expressed in the masterpiece of the motorcar, the Ferrari 250 GTO is one of my all-time favorites. As fate would have it, and in the one Stroke of Luck I can claim in my otherwise rather ordinary and uneventful life, one lived in my neighborhood when I was a child. A Ferrari GTO, that is. Well, not precisely my neighborhood (mostly Fords and Chevys there), but one or two neighborhoods over, where the folks had rather more money than they did in mine!

I happened to find out about it whilst traveling down the Totally Ordinary road that served as some kind of commercial Main Street in our town. As a teenager riding shotgun in my friend’s Morris Minor Woody, I happened to catch a glimpse of a beautiful red Italian racing car parked at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not the Ferrari, but one perhaps even more rare, a Maserati A6GCS. Since my friend and I were both Absolute Fanatics about such cars, the Morris made a quick turn into the KFC, whereupon we were quickly transfixed by the beauty of the Maserati. I don’t use the word “transfixed” lightly here! We were stunned! Keep in mind that we were in a perfectly ordinary town in the middle of the Mid-west, and much more common cars, say E-Type Jaguars, for example, were pretty rare beasts!

And so it came to pass, that as we were walking around the Maserati, pointing out the details, marveling, really, at the whole unlikelyness of it all . . . the owner strolled out of the KFC, familiar white and red boxes in hand, to find two teenagers all but drooling on his car! As if that weren’t surprising enough, the first words out of my friend’s mouth put a smile on his face, “That’s a beautiful A6GCS you have here.” Like some kid in a Morris Woody is going to be able to spout off the alpha numeric code for a car that last saw a race track before he was born? I can’t remember much of the conversation after that, but it ended with the owner (Jack Roiter), piling the boxes into the Maserati and saying, “Well, if you like this one, follow me home, I have another on you’d like.”

Follow we did, the Morris keeping up with the Maserati as well as it could, until pulling up beside his driveway, looking right at a real live Ferrari GTO. A Ferrari red Ferrari GTO. Oh My God! As if the Maserati A6GCS wasn’t unlikely enough! Without going into endless detail (of which I am quite capable!) suffice to say that I fell in love with that car instantly. This was a car unlike any other. A car with history (actually, the car that Ludovico Scarfiotti drove to the European Hillclimb Championship in ’63), a car that had body panels hand beaten out of aluminum (you could see the tiny hammer marks left by the artisans if you looked through the open deck lid) into a wonderful, powerful shape. And if you are a real student of the Ferrari GTO, I will note that this is the one example (of 32 first generation GTO’s surviving) that has a single rectangular scoop in front of the hood opening, as opposed to the traditional three half-round scoops.

This whole episode took place in ’67, so it was a few years previous that I had been racing the T-Jet example of the Ferrari GTO on the local Aurora tracks of my youth. Of course, I was a fan of the Ferrari GTO long before I met one in person, so I had covered thousands of laps behind the “wheel” of my Aurora Ferrari GTOs too! I had a team of them at one time, but only one survives in my collection to this day, the rather race worn #26 (see photo). For more information on the real car, some lovely photos and a comparison to the Pontiac GTO, please visit the Ferrari site.

Front to Front!

Beginning with the front view, we see that FALLER has left off the scoops that perch atop the hood (clear plexi-glass on the real car) and feed cooling air into the interior, whereas Aurora has left off the leather straps that did, in fact, secure the hood. So I’ll give them even up there, but when it comes to both the front vent, size of secondary lights, and brake vent ducts, Aurora wins hands down. FALLER either didn’t get them close to right, as with the hood shape and front vents, or left them off completely in the case of the brake ducts (and the front signal lights, for that matter). Headlight lens/cover shape is not perfect in either case, but Aurora came a lot closer. So for the front view, I give it advantage Aurora, running five points up from FALLER at this place in the game.

Rear View, Please

Keeping the car on the same plane, but rotating the bodies 180 degrees, we find ourselves facing the rear view. Regarding taillights, Aurora has the right count, including the signal lights, and mostly the right colors as well. Really, the signal lights should be amber, but that’s getting too picky, I’d say. In either case, FALLER falls flat once again, showing only one light per side and painting the whole light silver. As if that weren’t bad enough, FALLER has installed a vented rear panel, something akin to treatments later seen on the rear engine Ferraris of the era, but never on a GTO! I can’t imagine what they were thinking, or (alternately) just how poor the photographs must have been that the unfortunate FALLER modeling staff was working from! Finally, the Aurora GTO got the exhaust pipes right, FALLER left them off completely. Totaling up the rear view points then, we see Aurora adding to its commanding lead, as the FALLER falls further off the back.. I should also dock FALLER a bit for having the chassis stick out the rear of the car (similar to the Porsche 904), but I feel I’ve been brutal enough already!

Side to Side

Turning the body 90 degrees this time (or walking around to the side of the car, whichever you find most pleasing), we can see that while the Aurora version has the sides far too “flat” and missing the essential “roundness” that the FALLER has captured (as least somewhat), FALLER seems to have gotten the rest of it about as far wrong as possible! The notable side vents that are as trademark “Ferrari GTO” as any other visual clue on the car have been totally left off, ditto the nicely rounded vent behind the rear wheel opening. Having too many vents behind the side window (one is correct), and an incorrect shape of the door-line loses additional points. FALLER does pick up a point on Aurora for having a correctly sized and placed door release button while Aurora ignore this bit altogether. When you add it all up, the result is about the same as the previous two, in this case, FALLER 2 points, Aurora 5.

To Top It Off

Taking the cars now, and rotating them on their axis (as it were), we get a fine top view of both vehicles. Having already slammed FALLER for an incorrectly shaped hood line, I will give them credit for getting the trunk right, and even including the release button (Aurora didn’t). Both companies did a fine job on the fuel cap, Aurora’s being more correctly sized, but FALLERs having the right shape. I’d call the fuel caps even, with FALLER one point ahead in this view! It’s always good to win one battle, even if the war is rather hopelessly lost by this time! The “bulge” in the hood is another draw, with Aurora’s rather too prominent, and FALLER’s a bit weak. Last, and certainly not least, the top view of the FALLER gives the proper “bulge” to the rear fenders, and the fronts to a lesser extent, as opposed to Aurora’s more sterile treatment.

The Bottom View?

Is this really necessary? I mean, really, its rather upsetting to have the cars flipped over photographed while resting on their tops as if they were toys! True enough, I suppose, but I seem never to tire of marveling at what a dandy copy of the Aurora motor/chassis the FALLER example is! No, it’s not an exact copy, and there are subtle but important differences, yet the similarities are most overwhelming.

When You Add it All Up

When you do your sums, or in this case, even if you don’t, . . . you can see that Aurora is the big winner in the Ferrari GTO modeling race. Whereas FALLER and Aurora were fairly even with the Porsche 904, the Aurora example of the Ferrari GTO has clearly blown the doors (incorrectly shaped as they are!) off the FALLER Ferrari in all views save one. I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t point out that neither one really captures the perfectly proportioned lines of the full size Ferrari GTO. I didn’t realize how far “off” the Aurora car was until I saw the real car in person, yet I remember thinking at the time that Aurora had done a rather bad job of it. Fifteen years later when I first opened a FALLER example, I saw what a truly bad job really looks like! My only hope is that someday, an artist with the drive for precision and “eye” for form that Jason Boye and Chris Mullis seem to possess; might, . . . maybe . . . eventually . . .do a T-jet Ferrari GTO. Since Chris only does American cars, and Jason doesn’t do T-Jets, I would put the chances at slightly less than “slim to none,” but it doesn’t hurt to wish!

Keeping Score?

For those of you who are fans of such things, you will now find your score cards marked with one tie (Porsche 904) and one Victory for Aurora (Ferrari GTO), with the Jaguar E-Type (XK-E) and the venerable Volkswagen Beetle yet to come. I don’t have any other comparable cars in my collection, unless I want to compare the FALLER Capri with the AFX Capri, or the FALLER 911 with the AFX version. Neither of which would be particularly fair, with the relative scales being so different. So that wraps it up until next time! Thanks for staying awake, and be sure to join us for another exciting episode of Aurora vs. FALLER!